Apple

How much can one man take? I haven’t seen the kind of scrutiny that Steve Jobs is getting since, well, since I don’t know when. Heck, even outgoing, and good riddance to, former VP Chaney hardly even warranted a mention even though it is fairly obvious a man like him would not be moving his own boxes. Hmmmm, maybe he has cancer, or his dog is sick , or, well, again any number of plausible, or implausible explanations may present themselves.

My biggest beef with the coverage, and don’t get me wrong I’d like to know that my favorite CEO is going to be fine as much as the next guy, is that supposedly qualified guys are making diagnoses that are based on pure conjecture. No physical examination or any thing! WTF??? How about not speculating on, could be or might be without even seeing the guy. Practice medicine, not guess work.

Anyway, I hope the Steve is fine and that we can all get back to business as usual.

If anything, this is an opportunity for Apple to plant he seed that, even though it may be in the future, the company is fine with out the prodigal CEO.

My son likes phones. He pretty much gravitates to any phone so the iPhone is nothing special to him but pushing buttons is. On the iPhone there is really only one button to push so he has at it. Well, the other day he picked up the iPhone and it was locked and he rapidly pushed the home button a few times and it brought up the iPod controller! I didn’t know it did that, thanks little buddy!

Reminds me of another feature I found by accident. In fact, I even went to the Apple store to find out what it was and those guys couldn’t tell me. Seems when you have a song paused on the iPod function the name of the song shows up under the time instead of the date. I think this must have been changed with the 1.1.1 update because now the song name, and album cover as well, shows up only when the iPod is playing.

Over 300 new features and several that are major and will change the way you use your Mac.

If Time Machine lives up to its billing as a way to go back in time and restore and file on your system the usefulness of a backup solution just got easier.

The new finder looks interesting but I’ll have to wait to see how it works and feels to give an objective opinion.

Spaces may prove to be cool. For me, the ability to define different workspaces for different tasks should make me a bit more productive. At any given time I am likely to have 18-22 apps open apps and bunches of windows. If Spaces can help me stay a bit more organized that would be a good thing.

If I heard about Quick Look in the past it must have blown right past my memory circuit. With tens of thousands of files I produced on my Mac having a way to breeze through them sounds cool.

I am looking forward to a faster and better Spotlight as well. I recently began relying a lot more on the systems “Find” features rather than trying to take the time to file every doc in a hierarchal folder system. I now toss every document in the same “Document” folder, all still Photos and graphics in the Pictures folder, Music in Music and Movies in Movies folder. That covers about 95% of my filing. So far so good. By keeping the folder sort on “Most Recent” and using Spotlight to find groups of documents on the same subject, I think I am saving some time.

I’ll probably have to upgrade even if it were not for any other feature that Boot Camp. I have one, and only one, program I HAVE to run in Boot Camp. It is an RC Simulator called RealFlight G3.5. Doesn’t work in Parallels.

If you are looking at schmenzer speaks! on an iPhone you should be looking at a theme specifically formatted for easy and fast viewing on your iPhone. I got the WordPress plugin that automatically detects an iPhone request for a page and then displays it using the appropriate iPhone formatted theme from http://iwphone.contentrobot.com. If you have visitors who access your WordPress blog from an iPhone give this a shot. It does not affect viewers using other browsers who will still see the normal theme. Pretty cool!

Now I am on the hunt for the admin access tool that is formatted for doing blog posts from the iPhone!

First, let me say that I am overwhelmingly happy with the iPhone, especially the phone, calendar, contacts and Safari parts. And, I never really expected to use the iPhone as a primary iPod but now that I have it I think that would be cool, unfortunately, non of my current 5G Video accessories work with the iPhone.

Bummer #1

I’m getting ready for a trip and decided to try the iPhone with my Pioneer DEH-P4900IB Car Stereo. No joy. I got an error message on the Pioneer unit and a notice on the iPhone that this is not a compatible accessory. This is really only a minor issue since I usually have my 60-gig 5th generation iPod hooked up but what I wanted to really know is if it will charge the iPhone. I had just taken it off the dock and it had a full charge so I didn’t notice but I’ll try it again. The DEH-P4900 unit has only been available since Dec 28, 2006 and it kind of bums me out that it doesn’t support the iPhone.

Bummer #2

Neither my wonderful Grado SR-80s or my Sony Earbud MDR-EX81LPs work as manufactured because the headphone port is recessed and the plugs won’t go in. I know there is an accessory that will extend the port but it seems kind of susceptible to damage. There is some chance I’ll have a friend help take the excellent Sony earbuds and mate them to the stock Apple earphones. I’d like the better sound as well as be able to keep the nearly hands free phone features of the stock Apple headset.

Bummer #3

My cool XtremeMac MicroMemo microphone is not supported either.This would actually be useful if it worked. I wouldn’t have to carry around the 60GB Video to make recordings though I don’t know if I’d plug the iPhone into the dongle at a Radiators show!

I expect we will see some similar devices in the future if not just updates of these units. Time will tell.

For some clients I bill for consultation time spent on the telephone. On my RAZR I could pull up a call and check the duration for the call and enter it into my time-tracking app so that when it is time to bill at the end of the month I don’t have to remember how long that phone call a couple of weeks ago was. Well, for the life of me I can’t find or figure out how to do this with the iPhone. From what I’ve found there is no iPhone call timer or call duration timer except for the overall usage timer. This is not really an issue at my office because I can just start a new task in the time-tracking app but sure would be cool on the iPhone.

Today, Apple CEO Steve Jobs, or is it still iCEO, posted an open letter to all iPhone buyers who made their purchases before the price drop announced on Wednesday. In his open letter to all iPhone Customers Jobs states:

“Therefore, we have decided to offer every iPhone customer who purchased an iPhone from either Apple or AT&T, and who is not receiving a rebate or any other consideration, a $100 store credit towards the purchase of any product at an Apple Retail Store or the Apple Online Store. Details are still being worked out and will be posted on Apple’s website next week. Stay tuned.”

There you have it. Whining works. Although, some will say this response was already in the works, if not finalized, BEFORE the announcement of the $200 drop. Either way, now you can quitcher bitchin’.